The Attempt To Let Go And Move On

A little over a month ago, John told me “you don’t want to be someone I’m not careful with.”
But something’s happened. And I am now someone he is not careful with. And it’s good. Because, unlike everything else, his casual cruelty to me is finally doing the trick. Slowly, slowly, slowly. He was, I suppose, sort of like an octopus around my heart, and I have removed maybe half the tentacles.

The things he did, I doubt he’d even be aware of how badly they upset me. The first instigated our fight of a few weeks ago; I’d had too much to drink, so I forgot what he said that made me so upset: “I never led you on!”

On what planet? “Patience isn’t rejection” “Patience, patience, patience, patience.” ‘I need to be friends first.’ ‘This is how it works for me.’ And yet he never led me on? Yeah. Every single time me took charge, every time he told me to do something and I obeyed, every time he referred to our ‘dates,’ and said I was the only person he went out on dates with, every single time he asked for patience, every single time he played in the areas of power exchange. But he never led me on?

The second came in the guise of a silly argument about ideas. The kind we used to really relish. This one centered around something I have a little expertise in (I have a BA and an MA in Art History--a thoroughly frivolous detour before the JD. Although I no longer have anything to do with the whole art history world, it is something that I keep up with). So I knew he didn’t like the Abstract Expressionists, but there was this interesting article and I e-mailed it to him, and he just went off on me. How it had no value, how it wasn’t intellectual. He said “I’m not putting you down,” but he was SO putting me down. I said I didn’t appreciate his “smug condescension” and he got mad about that.

If he had said “I just don’t get it. I know you care about it, but I HATE it” that would have been fine. But he put down something that I have cared deeply about with a dismissal that it had no value and if I wanted to claim it could have any value I’d have to prove it the way I’d prove something in a court of law. I know I have weird tastes, but I expect the people that are close to me to be kind.

What is shocking is I that didn’t respond.

Usually, when I fight with people I care about, I don’t want to leave the fight. 98% of the time, I can see how I was responsible for at least 10% of a fight, and I will work to own that 10% and try to make amends. Here, I think he was totally out of line. His behaviour, frankly, shocked me. Stunned. I felt like he was casually cruel. I knew from things he had said that he had been casually cruel to other people, but I didn’t think he would ever turn that on me.

I don’t think anything else could have made me let him go. I kept trying, intellectually knowing this was a dead-end, but emotionally completely attached.

I’ve been depressed for a couple of days, but I think it is constructive and, sooner or later, I’ll try to climb my way out of this mess. . I feel like I’m in such a state of flux that I know my ad is no longer up-to-date, but don’t feel clear enough about who I am or what I want to actually write something.